Recently, while we successfully dealt with most of the problems caused by rapid growth, it remained unable to get a grip on billing errors. The customer service and billing departments were often flooded with complaints about erroneous bills.
Collect and organize information, analyze the data and underlying assumptions, and reexamine the problem for new perspectives
Brainstorm:
A Cause-and-Effect diagram (Fish Bone)shows that many different types of billing errors and 70 percent of the errors were due to an incorrect amount on the bill or billing for unordered goods.
1.Billing clerks: We should train the clerks to use the new system. Meanwhile, we can implement a staff reduction plan and hire the supervisor for the billing clerks and some higher educated person, it will reduce the operation cost and improve the efficiency.
2.Data input: Record customer phone orders in the computer system instead of on paper, and sort all orders by customer name and order date. Increase the times of moving batch of customer orders to order preparation in a day. Set up some punishments for those who input the wrong data.
3. Procedures: The confusing, inadequate and obsolete order taking and billing procedures “contribute” a lot to the billing errors. Because the documents are performed in folders, the information flow is very slow and the error rate will be extremely high. In order to fix this problem, we should apply a new information system which links all the departments together to simplify the whole procedure. The order taking department receives the orders and takes the customer account and order information into the system. If the account is not existed in the system, then the billing department will instantly send him to credit check. After receiving the orders, the order preparation department will have the information which done by the order taking department and use the same